By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

HARTFORD, Conn. – State officials have blocked a $100 million lawsuit against the state of Connecticut, filed on behalf of a family whose daughter survived the Sandy Hook school shooting, and who is allegedly suffering from emotional and psychological trauma.

Connecticut law requires “any claim against the state must be approved by the state claims commissioner before it can move forward,” reports Reuters.

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State officials announced earlier this week that improving school security was a matter best left to lawmakers, not slip-and-fall personal injury lawyers.

A day after the state denied the lawsuit, the family’s attorney, Irving Pinsky, announced he was withdrawing his request in order to evaluate evidence, but he did not rule out the possibility of trying again, ThomsonReuters.com reports.

“You follow the evidence,” Pinsky told the news service. “I’m doing a good thing. I’m pushing like hell for better security in our schools.”

There is nothing “in Pinsky’s professional history to suggest that he’s a credible advocate for statewide school safety reforms,” writes ThomsonReuters contributor Alison Frankel. “Pinsky is not a civil rights lawyer or a children’s advocate. He is, plain and simple, a personal injury lawyer – and one whose license to practice in Connecticut was suspended from May 2003 to December 2006.”

According to the withdrawn lawsuit, Pinsky was representing “Jill Doe,” a Sandy Hook student who “heard ‘cursing, screaming, and shooting’ over the school intercom when the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, opened fire at the school,” reports ThomsonReuters.com.

Even though the school kept its doors locked and had a security guard on duty, Pinsky says state education officials should have required greater security measures, such as having police monitor the school through a video feed and having “equipment to neutralize” armed attacks, reports the news site.

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It’s regrettable that a personal injury lawyer with dubious motives has successfully injected himself into this horrible tragedy, even if for a brief moment.

As Examiner.com writer Audrey Linden has noted:

“No one is saying that the families and surviving children were not emotionally damaged and greatly so. But, at this school, Principal Dawn Hochsprung had just implemented a new security system. Take into account that she and the school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, though unarmed and defenseless, lunged at the crazed shooter to protect the children and lost their lives in so doing.

“Take into account other teachers also put their lives in the hands of the shooter to save their children, and all that … could have been done to protect those children, was done. If anyone could entertain the thoughts of suing, it would be the families of the principal and those teachers who lost their lives.

“But, the fact is, the school was not negligent in providing security. The shooter had broken the glass to get into the school. The first people who tried to restrain him died in so doing. Ask what more could have been done?

“The answer would be ‘Nothing.’”